This is an aerial view of the Sunvalley Mall in the late 1960s.
If you look on the left hand side of the postcard, the grassy area is where the Willows Shopping Center is located.
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Take me back to those simpler days!
Too bad the local area and California has been destroyed since that picture was taken. California once was great, now it is in ruins!
Yes this county has certainly seen much better days.
Unfortunately there is no going back…..and there is no going forward either. Straight down is the only direction that is inevitable for this entire state.
We’d all be wise to make the necessary arrangements to relocate…I know that I am.
I’m sure the original inhabitants feel the same way, or they would if they hadn’t been mostly exterminated. (You know the ones I mean. They crossed the Asian land-bridge so long ago.). I try to always remember Europeans, Africans, and later arriving Asians were not the first humans on this land, and that our predecessors did great evil to take over. Karma could be a real female dog for us.
Hey Phil, I am guessing you read up on the progressive literature about the peaceful indigenous tribes. Now, Google search terms like torture and Cherokee and find that way before Europeans got here, some of these “mostly peaceful” tribes practiced slavery and the most extreme torture methods on captives, such as slowly cutting off their skin, hot coals, burying them up to the necks and cutting off their eyelids so their eyes dried in the sun, and other fun stuff.
Phil—More specifically, it was the Spaniards that claimed, and later colonized California. Most of the tribes in California were thought to be savage and dangerous. The Yukian, Penutian, Maidu and Wappo tribes were known for cannibalism. The Franciscans taught them Christianity, and a large percentage of the Indians died from smallpox.
It’s a little known fact that when Sunvalley opened, it was the largest indoor mall in the country. Of course that didn’t last long.
+1 my first time visiting I was amazed at how “large” it was…. way back then
Back before Emporium, back before the parking garage, back before thigs took over and made it unsafe and just unusable… back before the Concord city council let the city got to crap!
Are those trees the Willows?
In the picture you can see the Macy’s Auto Center (which is no longer there, and no one believes me when I tell them it was once there)… It backed up to the freeway and was on the ground level right where you see the point of the parking lot aiming west in the middle of the pictures.
People can’t imagine Macy’s selling tires and changing your oil but I had both done on the car back in the seventies and charged it on my Macy’s account.
Thanks Claycord for the memories. It’s true the area has really sunk socially and economically.
The one thing that hasn’t changed is the quarry you can see in the upper left of the pic, at least that I can tell. I live near the bottom of it since ’99. I guess they just dug deeper without expanding left or right.
Was that parking structure on the freeway side, and the separate big white building to the North or left hand side of the photo there in the late 1960s? I don’t think so. This photo’s gotta be later than the 1970s.
When Sunvalley Mall was being built, the lower floor was the last to be occupied. I rode my bicycle over from Martinez and Craig Breedlove was there with Spirit of America. I asked him “What is it like to drive 600 miles per hour?” He said that it is almost the same at 600 once you go past 300mph. The Beach Boys Brian Wilson didn’t sing Spirit of America at the concert last Saturday. These were indeed fun times.